The First Tesla Model S in Iran and Central Asia

Charging in St. Petersburg, Russia

St. Petersburg was our last destination in Russia. Besides its famous Hermitage, we mainly remembered the city from history lessons (Siege of Leningrad). On our last day, we experienced our own very, very little siege of St. Petersburg. I’ll tell more about this later.

Meating the EV-time team

Vadim, working with his team to grow the charging network for EVs in Russia, invited us to visit him and his team to learn more about his work. He told us, how EV-time is steadily growing the charging network especially in St. Petersburg. Unfortunately, the main part of the network is only open to holders of a special card. This card can only be distributed to Russians so far. The EV-time team is trying hard to change that and to extend the network outside of St. Petersburg. We are excited to see the result of their work the next time we’re in Russia!

Charging the car in the underground parking of a mall

Due to the reason named above, we didn’t use the EV-time network to charge the Tesla in St. Petersburg. We used a (individual) charging station in the underground parking of a mall. Of course, another legitimization card was necessary to get the charging going. It took a little while, until we found this card: The first security guy we asked brought Benedikt to the parking ticket machine. Since this was not what he wanted, he was sent to the information desk. The lady there told him to go to the administration of the parking garage. There, the people finally understood his question and followed Benedikt to our car. Apparently, there was no other EV in the parking garage for the last 4 months. Maybe, that’s the reason why nobody is informed… From a parking garage in Poland, where we charged last year and that had the same model of charger, we knew that charging only starts when you close the little door after you plugged in. After this was closed, charging started and we were happy!

Our siege of St. Petersburg

24 hours before we wanted to leave St. Petersburg, we noticed heavy road works in front of the gate leading to the backyard where we parked. There was a sign in Russian, probably put up the night before, that roadworks would last 2 days. One day too long for us… The feeling of being locked in, isn’t great. We decided to try to find another exit. Backyards in St. Petersburg seem to be like labyrinths. Our host helped us to find another way out. Somehow, we managed to get the car through a gate, only a few millimeters wider than the car, into the next courtyard. Thanks to an open gate towards the street, we could leave the courtyard labyrinth from there. Uffff…